Canada needs to improve access to civil and family justice system and find ways for people to settle disputes before they make it to court, a Kingston-born former Supreme Court of Canada justice said.

Thomas Cromwell, who served with the nation's highest court for eight years, said people involved in custody and divorce cases and civil disputes such as property damage claims have trouble getting proper representation for their day in court.

More importantly, many people don't have access to services that would keep disputes from ever making it in front of a judge.

"Services are inaccessible for a large number of people. There is a big gap between where legal aid ends and the ability to hire a private lawyer for any significant legal dispute begins," he said on Wednesday. "Courts are slow and backed up and there aren't as many support services as we probably need to try to help people resolve a dispute earlier, before it gets out of hand."

Cromwell brought that message to the Canadian Club of Kingston on Wednesday, with the hope of informing people outside of the legal profession about the challenges facing the country's court system.

"In the province of Ontario, people who are going to family court, over half of them are doing that without a lawyer," he said. "That has pretty serious impact on them because it means they are not getting the kind of advice they should have and it has a huge impact on the court system because those folks, through no fault of their own, can't deal with a matter as efficiently as people who are trained.

"It puts a big burden on the judges to assist those people to the best of their ability and slows things down and plugs things up."

Without professional legal guidance, clients are often not able to access mediation or other dispute-resolution opportunities.

"Sometimes all people want is an apology and a recognition that something happened that shouldn't have happened," Cromwell said. "There are a lot of different ways to get disputes off the highway to the courthouse."

Cromwell graduated from Queen's University with a music degree in 1973 and a law degree in 1976 before earning a graduate degree in law from Oxford University in 1977.

From 1979 to 1982, he practised law in Kingston and Toronto and taught at Queen's Law School. He taught law at Dalhousie University for 13 years between 1982 and 1997.

After 11 years on the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2008.